School Partnerships:
Learning Communities in Schools
Lindamood-bells mission is to help all students reach their learning potential. For many years the instructions in our Lindamood-Bell Learning Centers significantly helped students learn to read, spell, and comprehend language. Our experience and research has fostered two important understandings about language and literacy processing: 1) rather than just one skill, such as word recognition, oral vocabulary, paragraph decoding/fluency, and language comprehension; and 2) sensory-cognitive functions underlie those component skills and enable individuals to dual code language with their verbal and nonverbal systems. The amount of sensory processing available to a child is a primary factor in learning to decode and comprehend language and literacy skills. Our instructional methodologies, gleaned from research and experience working with thousands of students, align with a prominent theory of cognition called Dual coding Theory (DCT).
While the work in our centers is challenging and rewarding, we want to reach students who might otherwise not have access to our sensory- cognitive instruction in language and literacy processing. Lindamood-Bell stands alone in offering these methodologies to schools. In districts that have experienced success with our model. Leadership and staff operate with the understanding that language and literacy are cognitive abilities, and that language and literacy instruction must be based on a theory of cognition rather than adated eclectic approach of taking bits and pieces of a variety of programs or a silver bullet approach that uses whatever popular methodology is in vogue, neither of these practices has been effective on a scaled up basis over the year in teaching children to read, as evidenced by the continuing crisis in public education where millions of children are deemed learning disable. Billions of dollars are spent each year on special education for students, 80-90% of whom have reading disabilities. Effectively teaching children to read could reduce enrollment in special education and thus substantially change that expenditure, making money available for better schools, higher teacher salaries, more professional development, and more research to improve best practices for teaching children.
In addition to applicability to Special Education settings. Our programs and model is appropriate for professional development to address the needs of English Learners and regular education classrooms.
Components
It is important to note that Lindamood-Bells successful partnerships are not merely a program that is implemented. We are providing a comprehensive model of:
1) sustained professional development in Lindamood-Bells scientifically-based instructional methodologies for language and literacy development.
2) Diagnosis and differentiated instruction to meet student needs in language and literacy processing.
3) Data management, analysis and reporting for accountability.
4) A learning environment for small group and classroom intervention.
5) Leadership collaboration to create a learning community within schools.
More Information:
http://www.lindamoodbell.com/
http://inforequest.lblp.com/
